Paul Murray, an acclaimed Irish novelist, has clinched the coveted £30,000 (€35,000) top honour at the maiden Nero Book Awards. Born and raised in Dublin, Murray bagged the book of the year accolade for his fourth piece of literary work – ‘The Bee Sting,’ a tale centring on an Irish clan grappling with financial and emotional hardships in the wake of the 2008 banking turmoil.
Prevailing in the fiction section, Murray was among four scribes who individually dominated their respective categories, with each garnering £5,000. Ultimately, he was handpicked for the superior Nero Gold award. The proclamation came at a gathering in London on a Thursday, hosted by the illustrious writer Bernardine Evaristo. As the head judge, Evaristo praised Murray’s work as “an ambitious and mesmerising family drama set against Ireland’s late 2000s economic predicament.”
She continued to laud the novel for its suspenseful and linguistically outstanding narrative written with profound wit and compassion. The story introduces the readers to intricate characters whose lives are hindered by their history as they navigate the challenges of the present and yearn for a promising future. Murray, according to Evaristo, displays unmatched storytelling prowess, skilfully unveiling unsaid secrets and ambitions amid a difficult and sometimes perilous circumstances. She hailed the story as an exemplar fictional creation and endorsed the unanimous decision of the panel of judges to choose it as the very first book of the year for the Nero Book Awards.
The tale is set in the idyllic countryside of Ireland, dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 fiscal downfall and is dubbed as equally comic and sorrowful. It portrays a bourgeois Irish family whose fortune dwindles with the national banking crisis. Murray’s book, consisting of 650 pages, was authored amidst the global pandemic and had been nominated for several accolades, including the 2023 Booker Prize. Despite losing to fellow Irish author Paul Lynch’s ‘Prophet Song’, Murray secured the An Post Irish Book Awards’ book of the year accolade the previous year.
The prestigious Nero Gold award was won amidst stiff competition from other category winners, which included Scottish comic, Fern Brady, who clinched the non-fiction category for her autobiographical work, Strong Female Character, chronicling her journey to an autism diagnosis. The children’s fiction award went to Beth Lincoln, a writer based in Newcastle, for her murder mystery book, The Swifts, featuring illustrations from Claire Powell.
The debut fiction accolade was granted to Michael Magee, a Northern Irish writer, for his novel, Close To Home. The book narrates the tale of a young man grappling with the aftermath of an assault he committed at a party upon his return to Belfast post-university.
Established by the popular high-street coffee retailer, Caffe Nero, in 2023, the awards aim to honour the art of writing. The winners for the four categories were carefully handpicked by a judging panel from a pool of books sourced from the UK and Ireland over the preceding year. (PA)